Visual Arts Scotland: Textile Artists Shortlisted for the Inches Carr Award
Opening 2–6 July at Dundas Street Gallery in Edinburgh, the Visual Arts Scotland - Inches Carr Craft Development Award celebrates exceptional creativity in Scottish applied arts. Sixteen shortlisted artists are in the running for a £14,000 prize fund, with the exhibition offering a first glimpse into the breadth and innovation of contemporary craft in Scotland today.
Now under the custodianship of Visual Arts Scotland, the Inches Carr Award provides makers with vital financial support and mentoring to expand their practice. This year’s shortlist includes three textile artists - each exploring material, tradition and imagination in original ways.
We caught up with shortlisted textile artists Flore Gardner, Lynne Hocking, and Erin McQuarrie for '5 Minutes with a Friend', to find out more about the inspirations behind their work:
Flore Gardner
Flore pushes the boundaries of textile and drawing in work that embraces surrealism and psychological depth. Her stitched and drawn figures are dreamlike and disjointed, shaped by a desire to conjure "an excess" - something ungraspable, yet deeply felt. By distorting bodies and animal forms, she opens questions around identity, mortality and meaning.
‘Her Stories’ series, embroidered found photographs, 2018-2024. Flore Gardner
Flore, what is your first memory of a textile?
Learning to knit and sew as a young girl. I was taught by my French grandmother who spoke no English, and this was a form of building stories together despite the language barrier.
Can you put into words what you love about textiles?
In my work I am interested in the thread as a 3D line. In other words, how knitting, embroidery, crochet can be used as another form of drawing, which is my main practice. Using textile techniques as an artistic practice is also a way of crossing the limit between art and everyday life, and subverting an activity considered as ‘typically’ feminine into a form of creative resistance - a slow but sure way of defying the everyday through a creative act. In this way I also tap into the potential of textiles as a form of feminine narrative.
Then of course, I love the feel and the look of beautiful fabrics, the intricacy of lace, the versatility of knitting…
Where is your most inspiring space/place to create?
I always work in my home studio. I like the way my domestic life feeds/interferes with my work and vice versa. It also allows me to combine my roles of artist and single mum more easily, and to continue to work all the time, at night for example when I can’t sleep.
‘On My Mind’, lace and etching, 2022. Flore Gardner.
What has inspired you recently?
A couple of weeks ago I went to see the the Edinburgh College of Art Fashion Degree Show - it’s the first time I’d ever seen a fashion show and it was great! This was a dissolving of any boundaries between art and craft - some of the clothes looked like soft sculptures, some had text written on them, some were moving paintings.
And books are a huge source of inspiration for me, I am an avid reader and I could not make things if I did not read. On my reading list right now : Straw Dogs by John Gray (given to me by a friend and which I am finding very thought-provoking because I don’t agree with most of it!), The Mescaline Drawings by Henri Michaux (amazing how some of them look like mad knitting), Surrealism and the Occult by Nadia Choucha, and the CGP exhibition catalogue Préhistoire Une Enigme Moderne.
What is your most cherished textile, and why?
I found an antique lace shawl in a very old house I lived in in France - it’s yellowed and fragile but it’s just such a beautiful piece of work.
Where did you learn your craft?
Apart from my grandmother teaching me when I was small, I kind of just learned on my own, experimenting and building on the basic skills I had. In a way this is quite liberating because it allows me to use the techniques in a very specific way, according to my idea/project.
I did however do a course to learn to make lace (as this is quite complicated I think!), and I met my brilliant tutor, Kitty Mason, who at once understood what I was trying to achieve - notably to ‘translate’ my drawings into lace. She helped me enormously.
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Lynne Hocking
A hand-weaver and former scientist, Lynne transforms data into sculptural textile objects. A seventh-generation weaver, she draws on her background in genetics and a deep connection to place to translate code, ancestry and community into cloth. Sitting between handcraft and high-tech, her work is a unique dialogue between science and tradition.
Roof Over Our Heads (2023), Handwoven linen, cotton, wood. Lynne Hocking. Photo Credit: Jeni Reid
What is your first memory of a textile?
Hmm… This is a tricky one, but it’s probably the carpet in the living room of the house we stayed in when I was a toddler - a classic 1970s brown, orange and yellow graphic pattern that provided so many opportunities for imaginative play.
Can you put into words what you love about textiles?
I love that textiles are so accessible and universal - we experience them throughout our entire lives, as protection, comfort and expressions of identity, regardless of where we are in the world and what is happening around us. They hold secrets and stories, they carry ideas, they inspire conversation.
Where is your most inspiring space/place to create?
For me, much of the creating takes place inside my head - it’s about pulling together threads of thoughts and ideas, and considering ways to bring them together on the loom. That “mental weaving” happens anywhere and everywhere. When it gets closer to the loom stage, the physical making takes place in my studio space. It’s full of materials, found objects, samples, inspiration. The studio is in the city centre of Aberdeen, and is a real sanctuary - a space dedicated to making and experimenting, and thinking through making.
In Her Shoes (2023). Handwoven linen, cotton & jute, wood. Lynne Hocking. Photo Credit: Jeni Reid
What has inspired you recently?
On a recent trip to Krakow, I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Ethnographic Museum on the same day - catching Magdalena Abakanowciz’s huge textile sculptures followed by examples of (typically rural) folk art/craft. It was a reminder of the unifying acts of craft and making as human experience, and reinforced how much of contemporary art is rooted in craft traditions, processes and rituals.
What is your most cherished textile, and why?
There are a few, and the reasons are largely nostalgic - a rug from my grandparents’ house, a cross-stitch sampler I made as a child, my sons’ beloved and outgrown garments turned into cushions for their bedroom, a rug co-created with Zapotec rug weavers during a residency in Oaxaca, Mexico. Textiles that embody memories and represent acts of care/community are top of my list.
Where did you learn your craft?
“Making” is something that has been around me all my life, and I learned to sew, knit, spin and embroider from my mum and granny. Making was also still embedded within the curriculum when I attended primary and secondary school, and I experienced wood and metal working alongside textile techniques. I came to weaving after leaving a career as an academic scientist. In 2016, I spent nine months travelling around the Americas and Asia with my sons and, five months in, learned to weave using a backstrap loom on a jungly terrace in northern Thailand. Since then, I’ve learned a range of techniques and design methods from a variety of different weavers - the weaving community is generous with its knowledge. Aside from this, I learn from the loom and the materials, by experimenting at the edges of what they can do.
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Erin McQuarrie
Erin uses ancient tapestry techniques as a tool for contemporary reflection. Her weavings respond to everyday life through the measured rhythms of warp and weft - reviving medieval languages of making to resist the tempo of consumer culture. Her tapestries become quiet acts of resistance, embedding memory and time into every thread.
Laminaria, 2024, Cotton, handspun linen, fabric, wire. Erin McQuarrie
What is your first memory of a textile?
One of my first memories of a specific textile is probably a quilt my mum made for the inside of my cot. It was so vivid, a bright green colour, with mosaic patterned orange flowers on it in sunburst shapes. The colours must have been incredibly stimulating for me as child.
Can you put into words what you love about textiles?
I believe that textiles are a universal medium. We are adorned and concealed by textiles, through garments and our built environment, allowing us to express ourselves uniquely as individuals. I love working in a field that encourages community connection through circles and networks. Communal gathering has always been integral to textile making across cultures for thousands of years, and, in these fragmented political times, I think now more than ever there are lessons to learn from this ethos.
I feel incredibly peaceful and grounded when weaving. I often work in response to feelings or memories of place. Textiles can trap or hold these ephemeral qualities, these precious emotions and glimpses of landscape. There is a power in nurturing and growing a piece and an integrity to understanding every inch of its structure. The transformation of fibre through simple process has always fascinated me. Colour, texture and form give voice to my own form of tangible communication - quietly powerful and intentional.
Where is your most inspiring space/place to create?
My studio in the Scottish Highlands, which is about two minutes’ walk from the beach. I have not always had a studio, mostly making work from my kitchen table, so sometimes I pinch myself. It is such a vital and inspiring space to make work, and I relish my time there.
What has inspired you recently?
Living in the Scottish Highlands, I am endlessly inspired by the magnetic landscape of the North as it changes through the seasons. The wildflowers, birds and rugged sea. I recently travelled to Orkney, a group of islands off mainland Scotland. It is magical place which has many very well-preserved Neolithic sites. The scale and ingenuity of these has been incredibly influential in my current work in progress and I hope to return there soon.
I was also incredibly lucky to see the Olga de Amaral show at the Cartier Foundation in Paris in February. Tapestry on a monumental scale. Her ability to hone materials and play with texture is sublime.
Dava, 2025. Linen, wool, wood, wire, natural dye. Erin McQuarrie
What is your most cherished textile, and why?
A linen duster coat which my mum bought in Glasgow in the 1970’s. It is exceptionally long, light cream in colour, with a pale dusty pink silky lining and six coconut shell buttons which have begun to crack after years of use. Linen, the fabric that can perfectly transition between hot and cold, rain and sun… is made for Scottish weather. In childhood photographs, my mum is wearing this flowing coat, leather satchel over one shoulder, her arms stretched out holding the hands of my brother and I. As a teenager, I coveted it and, in my twenties, I inherited it. Flitted between flats, ironed and lovingly rolled into a neat sausage, it was slipped into suitcases for holidays and worn on nights out to cover up bare legs. As it has become more worn, my mum and I have repaired it together. Our stitch marks on the cuffs, yoke, pockets, and lining are all in conversation, another evolution in the life of this well-loved garment, which I will always cherish.
Where did you learn your craft?
I studied at Textiles at The Glasgow School of Art where I learnt the basics of many textile processes and specialised in Print. The facilities were incredible, and I am so thankful for the technical knowledge I gained there, as well as the encouragement to nurture the conceptual side of my practice. I also had the opportunity to study in Japan at Tama Art University in Tokyo in my second year and this was transformative. Learning from my tutors and classmates this is where I truly began to understand and appreciate craft at a deeper level.
I knew then that textile making would become a source of joy, comfort and refuge throughout my life. After working in industry, I was very lucky to be awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study on the MFA in Textiles at Parsons School of Design. It is hard to express how influential this experience was for me. The city is pulsating with creativity and on the program, I was taught by some influential mentors and made lifelong friends that have a mutual passion for the medium as an artform. I found the community I had been searching for. Working throughout the pandemic in New York, I learned to source my materials in unique and creative ways and began building all my tools by hand. This way of accessible making is still intrinsic to my practice today.
These formative experiences were prefaced by a childhood of being encouraged to work with wool, draw, and play. That inquisitiveness and playfulness, I hope, will always be the core of my practice.
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Further Information:
Flore Gardner:
Lynne Hocking
Erin McQuarrie
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Image Credits:
Lead: Peeking (detail) 2023. Cotton, linen, wool, fabric, wire, wood. Erin McQuarrie.
All other images as credited in photo captions.